Dean Ambrose about William Regal

Now this is a little off kayfabe and it doesn’t really belong to the feud between Dean Ambrose and William Regal. This is actually a page of collected videos, audios and transcripts of Jonathan Good speaking about Darren Matthews. But, of course, when he speaks about him he uses his in-ring name. That’s always been the most confusing but also most interesting part of wrestling for me to be honest. Because it’s pretty clear that the people in the ring are only portrayed characters but the people talking about their characters always using and are referred to their in-ring / character names. Sometimes what they are saying in interviews is kayfabe, sometimes it’s real. Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can’t. But somehow that adds to the beauty of wrestling. So, what you get here certainly can be summarized as Jonathan Good talking about Darren Matthews in deep respect, admiration and fondness. Enjoy!

“I’m everybody’s perfect opponent? Does that mean I’m just going to get beat up for the next ten years? (…) There’s high praise from a guy I have a lot of respect for. Both, in and out of the ring with William Regal, it was a real pleasure getting to work with him and really getting to have a really fleshed out feud with him that nobody really saw because, it was on TV in Florida on developmental, but it was very cool to hear words like that from a guy like that. When I get stuff like that it’s still kind of surreal because these are guys that I studied and grew up watching. To be on a level with them where we can talk on the same level about stuff is still kind of surreal for me.”

Interview in Frankfurt am Main, Germany during the WWE Live Tour in Europe15 November 2014 / (full interview)

“I actually didn’t come up with that name. ‘Dirty Deeds’ is, uh… I must credit to Sir William Regal. He was all… just goes ‘Dirty Deeds’. And I pretty much, uh… He’s one of the guys whose advice I’ll take implicitly every time, you know, without questioning it. So, it was ‘Dirty Deeds’ from that on. So, you know, AC/DC’s one of my favourite bands of all time, and [Dirty Deeds]’s one of my favourite songs of all time. You know, dirty deed, doing dirty kinda guy, so it just fits. Uh, you know, it’s a dirty move, done by a dirty guy. Sometimes you just gotta do it dirty, you know what I mean.”

“Traveling with William Regal is great. I had the opportunity to travel with him quite a few times. And he will tell a joke that you don’t realize as a joke for about fifteen minutes. I can’t even do on because I would literally take up the entire show or more. But, you know, ‘I’m going to tell you about the time that I met an old chap who went traveling in the jungles of South Africa’. Kinda, you’re thinking, he’s gonna telling a joke or a story right now and he’s whispering, barely you can hear him. And he’s just looking straight ahead, you know, stone-faced and then he goes on with the story and then it gets ridiculous and you start to think that it’s a joke. Where is the punchline? But it never comes. And then you start thinking that he’s actually telling a crazy story. And then twenty minutes later, then the punchline comes. And he doesn’t even… you realize… And then you laugh and you’ve committed so much time doing this that it’s hilarious, it’s weird – old British humour, you know. But that’s a treat.”

“I’m actually real proud of a lot of the work that I did on the TV shows at FCW, ‘cause, you know, I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of there. We had a chance to do some really cool stuff. I had a feud with Seth there. And I had a feud with William Regal there, where we had two matches. But it was one of my favourite things I’ve ever done, not a lot of people have seen it, but it’s kinda one of the things where you have the final blow off thing. And it was the last, our blow off to the feud was the last match of the last ever FCW television show and it was one of those things where you know, even though there’s only two hundred people in the building, but you know that’s what everybody came to see, kinda thing. (…) He was very vital to me, making sure that-kinda elbowing people and being like ‘you see this guy?’”

“I had two matches in FCW with William Regal who was a guy I’ve studied, looked up to and tried to learn from; and a guy who’s been a mentor, a yoda; a guy whose advice I’ll always take. We were able to have two matches and a year long story that played out and ended with the final FCW match on television ever. And that was how FCW TV ended. Jim Ross and Dusty Rhodes were on commentary that night and it was kinda special, big fight atmosphere kind of thing, that we worked to build to for a year.

You know, in the first match he dislocates my shoulder. Then, I want a rematch and tried to get him into a rematch for the longest time, and I am stewing, and brooding and getting angrier. My goal, my entire goal becomes to avenge this loss of, you know, my pride, and my dignity and my arm, and I am gonna do the same thing to him.

And we finally get there, and then I beat the crap out of him and rip his ear off by smashing it into an exposed turn buckle. And he tries to fight back, and as soon as they saw a little bit of blood, you know, Bill DeMott’s in the back, and then trainers, trainers, trainers, trainer jumps in the ring and they try to stop the match. And I’m redlining, I’m going [makes sound of engine roar], you know.

Regal’s stopped fighting, there’s doctors in the ring – it was just a chaotic scene in there; wrestlers were getting rushed out, nobody knew what to do; nobody knew what was going on. And then it ended with me ripping his ear off and kneeing him in the face with his own trademark finisher and him proverbially dying in the middle of the ring. It was a cool, like, strangely poetic, sad ending to FCW television.

Of all the things I’ll ever do, one of the things that I’ll always be the most proud of, was my rivalry with William Regal.”

Dear Sunshine,

you came here by accident? Well, not at all. You must be a wrestling fan, perhaps a total Dean Ambrose fangirl or fanboy. Maybe you do like William Regal, Wade Barrett – Bad News Barrett – Damien Sandow, Chris Jericho – Y2J – Cesaro as well. You even still like CM Punk and most certainly Paul Heyman. But most of all you consider yourself a Dean Ambrose fan. Well, don’t go any further then, because you’ll find anything about Dean Ambrose in here: hilarious wrestling reviews, written to an intellectual jerk gimmick. You’ll love it. Together with watching the videos from the great Dean Ambrose appreciation website, all the Gifs that I’ve collected from Tumblr (and properly marked my sources, of course!) and looking at my collages. Everything you need to know about Dean Ambrose, you’ll find in my Dean Ambrose FAQ. But if you are into reading, I’ll always recommend reading my Dean Ambrose wrestling reviews. Find them all at once under the Dean Ambrose hashtag – right into this hashtag cloud on the right from this meaningless little text here.